Electronic mail (e.g. “e-mail,” etc.) is typically received with various information stored in a header thereof. Such information may include, but is not limited to a name, e-mail address, date, time stamp, etc. For a variety of reasons, unfortunately, such time stamp may be incorrect.
For example, the sent time may be spoofed to a desired time by a sending e-mail server. Further, the date selected by the sending e-mail server may be backdated or postdated due to one reason or another. Still yet, the date and/or time may be changed accidentally by the sending e-mail server.
Even if both send and received time stamps are present in a mail header, they may be misleading. For instance, when such time stamps are different (e.g. one says sent on the 20th of January and the other says received on the 22nd of January, etc.), the sender may argue that the recipient spoofed the received time. It is also possible that the recipient may spoof the “sent time” as well just by taking the SMTP protocol support, etc. Similarly, in this case, the recipient may argue that the sender spoofed the sent time.
Whatever the reason, when a recipient reviews an e-mail, they will see an incorrect sent time, date, etc. which gives rise to various potential problems. Just by way of example, in the context of governmental organizations [e.g. internal revenue service (IRS), federal bureau of investigation (FBI), internal security, police, department of justice, etc.], law firms, financial consulting firms, etc., the sending time/date and/or receiving time/date of an e-mail is very significant. With present systems, a sender can send an e-mail with a wrong time stamp and claim that they sent such e-mail on-time, ahead-of-time, etc. In such situations, it may be difficult for the recipient organization to explain that they did not receive such e-mail on-time.
There is thus a need for overcoming these and/or other problems associated with the prior art.